Crash Kills Elmhurst School Chief, Wife

Longtime Elmhurst educator and School Supt. Russell W. Thiems and his wife were killed Saturday morning when their car collided with a farm tractor in rural Lee County.

Thiems, 57, and his wife, Patty, 56, were traveling in their car when it hit a tractor about 11:50 a.m. at Inlet and Shady Oaks Roads, about 25 miles south of Dixon, said Lee County Sheriff`s Deputy Jay Ball.

Thiems was pronounced dead at the scene; his wife was taken to Mendota Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead later. Tractor driver Charles Leffelman, 79, of Sublette was not hospitalized, Ball said. The accident was still under investigation.

``It`s a tremendous shock,`` said Richard MacFeely, deputy superintendent of Elmhurst Unit School District 205 and a friend of Thiems` for a decade.

``One of his great attributes was he was a very caring administrator.

``He would help with professional as well as personal problems. He would always have time to sit and talk with someone who had a problem or trouble.`` Thiems, whose tenure in education spanned almost 35 years, announced at a school board meeting last year that he planned to retire in mid-1993. Thiems later said he was worried about the future of education.

``I have concerns about where we`re going in education because I don`t see it as a high priority as the rhetoric says,`` he said. ``I am concerned about community support.``

Thiems cited as his top accomplishments the launching of a program designed to upgrade teacher skills and the addition of computers and technology to improve education.

Thiems was also a feisty critic of tax caps. In 1991, he wrote a letter to Gov. Jim Edgar in which he said, ``I can`t tell you in polite terms how wrong I believe the concept`` of tax caps is.

Thiems` lengthy career in education began in 1958, when he began teaching science after receiving a bachelor`s degree in education from Illinois State University. After receiving a master`s degree from Northern Illinois University in 1964, he was named principal of Yorkfield Elementary School in Elmhurst.

Thiems was also principal of Madison and Lincoln Elementary Schools from 1965 to 1972. In that year, Thiems received a doctorate degree from Northwestern University and was named assistant superintendent of Elementary School District 46, a position he kept when District 205 was formed in 1974. Thiems was named District 205 superintendent in 1983.